Posts Tagged ‘PAP’

As I’ve secured my main Wi-Fi network with WPA2 Enterprise, my Apple Airport devices are pointed at a RADIUS server, which in turn is pointed at an LDAP directory which contains the user details. The LDAP directory does not store the password in the clear which means that authentication methods like CHAP, MSCHAP and MSCHAPv2 don’t work as they require the original password. I need to use EAP-TTLS with PAP authentication however iOS and OS X clients will not attempt this method by default.

It’s theoretically easy to make iOS and OS X clients use this method, you simply install a Mobile Configuration Profile (a file with a .mobileconfig extension) which amongst other things instructs the client how to connect to a given Wi-Fi network. The tricky part is generating this file if you maybe don’t have access to an OS X Server. Apple originally provided the iPhone Configuration Utility (iPCU) which has been deprecated in favour of the Apple Configurator utility. This works fine for iOS devices that you can attach directly by USB but sometimes you might want to transfer a profile to someone via e-mail or install it on an OS X client. It’s not obvious how to export a profile from the tool, but there is a way.

When you open Apple Configurator it looks like this:

If you enable Supervision the Profiles section changes to allow you to click + and create a new profile:

In my profile as a minimum I needed to import the root certificate of the authority used to sign the certificate on my RADIUS server. Then configure my Wi-Fi network with the SSID, Security Type, EAP Type of TTLS and then select PAP as the Inner Authentication. I also trusted the certificate I’d just imported which prevents iOS and OS X prompting you to trust it. By not setting the Username and Password this keeps the profile generic for any user. Then after saving the profile you can then export it:

This gives you the familiar .mobileconfig profile which can then be imported on any iOS or OS X client.